Getting started

A short tour of the window, followed by the shortest path from a character file to exported LODs.

On this page

The main window
The three workspaces
Menus
Your first LODs
Where to go next

The main window

Main window with a loaded character — LOD Editor with a character loaded and five LODs generated.

Area	What it is for
Left panel — Decimate / Paint	Decimate: presets, the LOD levels (count and each level's target), generation and animation-aware refinement. Paint: mask brushes and mask layers.
Viewports — Original and LOD	The original mesh and the LOD selected in the table, sharing one camera. Each has its own toolbar (texturing, wireframe, lights, skeleton, face culling, smooth normals, shading mode).
Playback bar	Clip selector, frame counter, play controls and a frame slider.
Deviation timeline	Surface and silhouette error of the selected LOD for every frame of the evaluated clips. Click to jump to a frame; mark frame ranges.
Clips / Ranges	Which animations are evaluated, and the frame ranges you have marked.

The three workspaces

The tabs under the menu bar switch between workspaces:

LOD Editor — generate, inspect and refine LODs; paint masks. See Generating LODs.
Atlas Editor — the character's texture layout (UV atlas) and texture-gap repair. See Texture atlas.
Benchmark — an animated crowd of your character using your LODs, with performance readouts. See Performance benchmark.

Tabs can be placed side by side: drag a tab (for example Atlas Editor) towards the right edge of the window until a blue drop area appears, then release. This is handy for working on the mesh and the texture atlas at the same time.

LOD Editor and Atlas Editor side by side — LOD Editor and Atlas Editor docked side by side.

Menus

Menu	Contents
File	New Project, Load Project, Open Recent, Save Project (`Ctrl`+`S`), Save Project As (`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`S`), Export LODs, Exit.
Import	Load Mesh, Load Animation.
Selection	Enable Selection; Triangle / Island mode; Refine within selected islands; Lock Selection; Select All (`Ctrl`+`A`), Clear, Invert; Create Mask from Selection.
View	Settings.
Help	View Help, About.

Your first LODs

Load a character. Import > Load Mesh, pick a skinned FBX. The dialog previews the file and lists its mesh, skeleton, animations and textures before you commit. More about the Load Mesh dialog. No animated character at hand? The free Animated People at renderpeople.com/free-3d-people (FBX format) are the characters used in this help.
Choose the LOD levels. LODinize starts with five levels that each keep 50 % of the previous one. In Decimate, pick a Preset (Mobile, PC, VR Quest or one of your own), or change the LOD count (2–8), Each level keeps, or one level's target. More about the LOD levels.
Generate. Click Generate LODs. The table fills with the levels, their target percentage, triangle count and simplification error, and the deviation timeline is computed.
Review. Select a level in the table to show it in the LOD viewport and in the timeline. Play the animation, or click a peak in the timeline to jump to the worst frame.
Optionally refine. Refine with animation re-builds the LODs taking a set of animation poses into account, so they hold up better in motion. About refinement.
Export. File > Export LODs (or the export button next to Generate LODs). Export options.
Save the project so masks, clip choices and settings can be reused: File > Save Project.

Five LOD levels generated — After Generate LODs: five levels, and the error curves for the selected level.

Where to go next

Workflow: a new character from scratch

Load a mesh, add an animation from another file, refine, export, save.

Guide: finding where a LOD breaks

Use the timeline and the heatmaps to locate the problem frame and body part.

Tools & features

Everything in the application, grouped by purpose.